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Category Archives: 2013

Winter may still be here for a while, but its quiet is vanishing, and fast. Last week’s introspection time is over. The year’s relationship emphasis is kicking back into gear. The atmosphere is charged and hyperactive, but not necessarily forward ho! More like every which way, it’ll feel at times.

Core relationship definitions and issues are moving to the front burner, where they will simmer and sometimes boil over for the next 18 months or so. (The nodes of the Moon — points that represent our collective experience and past — are moving for that time into Aries and Libra, the axis that balances individuality with partnering.)

This week, the relationship dance starts with opportunity and builds to decisive action by Sunday. Watch for an opening Monday to tie down or put form to a connection, as Venus, the goddess of love and all we value, reaches out to Saturn, the ruler of structure and commitment. This isn’t mandatory, and you will have to step through the opening to gain its benefit.

If you choose to stay off the dance floor, though, you’ll be on it by the weekend. Demands, propositions or connections result when Venus clashes with her lover Mars, the god of war and ruler of our drive. Mars is under the goddess’ command, since he is in Libra, a sign she rules, which means desire is dictating the action. Sparking between the cosmic lovers can spawn passion down here on earth; that could translate into frustration or anger as easily as it could more pleasurable fieriness.

Besides, you won’t be the same person on Sunday that you were on Monday. Clean-up work is breaking out — or washing over — a part of your life that started to free up in January. That was a reaction to or outgrowth of the ground shifting beneath your feet between Christmas and New Year’s. Now comes another wave of release, of liberation no matter what the cost, and probably of high-pitched drama, too. It’s the byproduct of bigger-is-better Jupiter building to a confrontation Wednesday confrontation with unpredictable, radical Uranus.

What their clash knocks loose might be cathartic. It definitely has a silver lining; ask if you can’t see it. It’s also prepping you and the ground — watering it, even — for the next round of overhauling and restructuring that’s coming in April.

These aspects alone would make for a standout week, but they are not half of what’s going on. Friday’s Pisces New Moon has curative, stabilizing properties that could prove extremely beneficial. They hold the promise of stretching your concept of what’s possible in your life, bringing you onto the change bandwagon, and strengthening your trust and knowing. Read more in my mooncast, which will be up by Friday.

The Moon’s impact could feel like you’re in a washing machine with the agitators whirring back and forth. That’s because one retrograde cycle is ending as two other ones begin.

Mercury is wrapping up his month-long retrograde, which means that stalled, confused or snarled communication, technology and travel matters will start clearing up. Relief is not immediate, however. Mercury stations direct on Friday, but does not move noticeably until the beginning of next week. This creates a suspended-in-time sensation, so do continue to research, organize and take information under advisement.

We won’t be simply hanging in slowed time, however. Mercury is handing the retrograde baton to two planets that will keep the water (and probably you) churning until all of them move off their turning point. Mars, the ruler of our energy, motivation and action, stations direct in Libra on Friday. Saturn starts his turnaround in Scorpio the next day.

The double whammy will have us revisiting agreements, relationships and agendas, with special attention to trust, reciprocity and return on investment. Both retrogrades amplify the pressure from the current eclipses to reset and reboot our relationships, from specific ones to expectations and ground rules to the nature and quality of their exchange.

Mars will backtrack until May 20 (that’s nearly three months) from 27 Libra to 9 Libra. His travels will ultimately take him (and us) back to where he prodded so much to the surface between Christmas and the middle of January. Saturn’s annual retrograde, through mid-July, will take him from from 23 Scorpio to 16 Scorpio. He will help us go deeper into some connections, while turning up reason to leave or restructure in others.

Mars’ journey in particular is part of April’s volatile, dynamic weather. Use the early weeks of his retrograde to get ready: Go back over events since the first of the year, pick up dropped connections, and dare to renegotiate when appropriate. This weekend, your heart will tell you what to address now.

It’s not too late to use my 2014 astro-overview *and* guides for each sign! They are mini-readings with staying power for the entire year. Get your own copies here.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for six years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net (and replace “AT” with @). Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

The year is going out with a bang. This week courses with awakening, motivating, volatile and even incendiary impulses. They’re not merely dealing with old business. They’re also propelling us straight into the tasks, themes and issues of 2014.

The playing field is as likely to be within you us as well as in the behavior and external events you encounter. Cosmic alarm clocks are going off on multiple levels and moving everyone forward on developments and decisions (or deepening fractures) dating to the early days of May, October and November. Restructuring has been in the works since all of those times, and the next big phase of work is here.

The main instigator is Mars, the planet of action, aggression and outright war, marching forward in Libra, the sign of relationships, teamwork and negotiation. This week his path takes him directly into the ongoing conflict between the cosmic change agents, Uranus and Pluto, who have been keeping the pressure on for fundamental restructuring since mid-2012. Mars is now adding relationship issues into the mix and moving the change imperative into new levels.

Over the course of the week, the action planet is connecting with the change agents in a dynamic configuration called a t-square. The link-up has movement written all over it, in every conceivable way you can look at it. Hotheads Mars and Uranus are bearing down on Pluto, the lord of death and transfiguration. The pressure is forcing structural change to go even deeper (akin to cleaning out a failed root canal) and dump out in the opposite sign of Cancer, ground zero for home, family, tradition, sentimentality and unbridled emotions.

Just what you want for the week of Christmas, right? Holiday gatherings will not be the same-old same-old, that’s for sure. Attendees aren’t the same as they were in previous years. People will be expressing themselves differently, treating each other differently and picking their battles — key concept! — differently.

We’re implementing decisions (particularly from early October), teaming up, renegotiating, taking stands, escalating efforts, launching assaults and deepening fractures and schisms. What happens now has a fuse that will burn into next October, with flare-ups probable before then.

It’s unlikely that utterly foreign factors are entering the picture, although some might have been cloaked, hidden, held at bay or not accurately perceived before. What’s happening is an organic outgrowth of processes that have been long underway.

Some of the playing out will be freeing, simplifying, energizing and empowering. Watch out, though, for other potentials — flaring tempers and frustrations, for starters, which have the power to escalate into danger, accidents and violence. The pressure is pushing us past comfort zones (often ultimately beneficial, but sometimes messy in the playing out). Do keep in mind that the god of war is going head to head with a loose cannon and the lord of the underworld. Pick battles prudently; if you walk away, you can always fight another day. Take care especially when behind the wheel.

Underlying all the activity is a practical, almost somber vibe. Real-world, long-term ramifications are at the forefront of every mind. Mercury, the ruler of communication and transportation, enters goal-oriented Capricorn on Tuesday for three weeks.

His shift into Capricorn, coupled with the retrograde there of Venus, ruler of all we hold dear, is making for a more introspective and reflective winter than usual. Minimalism is gaining appeal. Aren’t you already scaling back? Cutting activities down? Investing your thoughts and time more in matters that mean something to you, than in the usual hubbub and gift avalanche? That’s the meaning of this holiday season: memories, experiences and fewer gifts than in the past, carefully selected and with lasting value.

What’s important comes clearly into view by Sunday, when Mercury meets the Sun and sets off a rain of lightning bolts with Uranus. The week ends with more clarity and self-knowledge, unexpected, game-changing messages and realizations, and minds catapulting out of safe, familiar boxes. We’ll be ringing out the old and ringing in the new well ahead of the calendar.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. (Replace “AT” with @.) Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

That whirlwind whizzing around you is courtesy of this month’s Gemini Full Moon. It’s a hyper-active, hyper-chatty status report on what runs through your mind, what comes out of your mouth and where and how you get about.

All these areas underwent major updating in the past couple of years, as the Gemini/Sagittarius eclipses set off review and rebooting from 2010 through this past spring. Now we get to see how well the updates are doing. This month’s Full Moon is the first since the eclipse cycle ended, and it’s putting our communication and transportation systems into a wind tunnel for testing.

The result isn’t quiet. There’s so much to think about, to pass on, to hear and, of course, to handle. As your attention splatters in fifteen directions simultaneously, make the effort to catch the words flying around. What are you saying to yourself? What are people actually saying? Is that the same as what you’re hearing? And are people actually hearing you? The people who reliably “got” you may have lost that knack. More probably, you’re the one who’s lost the resonance with the person they “got” before. (Get it?)

Another question is: What isn’t working? That one is easier to spot. The wind tunnel trial is revealing flaws in the system. Technology is failing. Certain streams in our data feed are growing stale, uninteresting or unpleasant. Interchange after interchange is demonstrating the power of words. Forget the platitude “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” This Full Moon demonstrates vividly that words can touch, pierce and move the heart.

Some adjustments are necessary, and how. They’re being required by the nature of the relationship between the rulers of the Sun and the Moon, Jupiter and his magic mushrooming touch and Mercury, the cosmic messenger. Any pairing of theirs whips up talk and running around. They’re currently making an adjustment or crossroads aspect, which escalates the need, nature and extent of tweaks and fixes. For some of us, cars and technology have been taking the hit. Others have had communications that tip previous thinking on its side, some extreme enough to suggest hell is freezing over.

Old thoughts are breaking up spontaneously. (The same is true, alas, of communication technology and vehicles.) We’re all shaking off cobwebs. Uranus, the agent of radical, liberating, unexpected change, is ending his five month retrograde eight hours after the Full Moon peaks. Changes that have been simmering will start erupting now, starting with Gemini-ruled matters, in general and in your chart.

Watch for two images to play out in the coming weeks. We’re in a cosmic game of crack the whip — an old pasttime that involved children holding hands in a line on ice and skating increasingly violently till a person at an end flew off. We’re each also at the core of a cosmic centrifuge. As the machine spins ever faster, notice what it flings out of the center of your thinking, your life and your universe. Feel free to loosen your grip or nudge anything out and let the centrifuge do its job.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

The skies are setting the stage for next year. They’re drawing attention to how we do (or don’t) get along with others, what we’re done with and what matters most. All play a role in what’s ahead, this week and for months beyond.

Relationship themes are heating up that will take us through the middle of next summer. They aren’t inherently bad or good. They just are. They boil down to investing energy into figuring out how we are going to coexist with others.

Incentive and motivation are building to tackle this. Mars, the warrior god and ruler of our drive, is traveling through Libra, the sign of relationships, verbal artistry and striving for harmony and balance. (Emphasis on the striving, rather than the having.)

Notice the quality of your interactions, the recurring themes and the identities of people crossing your screen. At minimum, they point to issues you’re addressing over the long haul. (Watch for more conscious negotiation or give-and-take and less just putting-up-with.) They’re building toward big shifts and breakthroughs when Mars joins Uranus and Pluto in their ongoing change imperative, between Christmas and New Year’s.

How you talk to people is already in new territory. Tuesday’s Gemini Full Moon is showing how far you’ve come since 2010, when a reboot began of the nature of your thoughts and data sources, what you do with information and how you get around. (Your relationship to your community and siblings could be in the mix, too.) As this Full Moon puts finishing touches on the reboot, evidence and emotions are cresting that show a chapter in your life is well and truly closed. Here’s one question to get you thinking: Who were you talking to frequently two and three years ago, and who are you talking to now? Read more in my mooncast, which will be posted on the site by Monday.

Thoughts are downshifting into the practical, solemn and introspective this weekend, and that’s how they’re spending the winter. The season officially arrives on Saturday, when the Sun enters Capricorn. This year, we have an additional cause for the years-gone-by feel that so often haunts the holidays: The solstice brings Venus turning retrograde in Capricorn, too. Her backtracking lasts until the end of January, but because it starts on the first day of winter, it colors the entire season.

Word to the wise: finish important shopping by Friday.

Anything new that enters your life during the Venus retrograde does not have the value it presents or you expect. At the same time, people and financial or creative situations from the past may come back around for a second look, or for tying up loose ends, or for reminders.

Don’t get engaged, marry, launch a business or buy a big-ticket item now. Proceed carefully with new connections and projects, because they are likely not to be about what you are thinking. Do soul-searching. Be ruthless with assessments and bottom-line evaluations; your long-term security and future are at stake. And by all means pay attention to old business and themes when they return.

Approach this winter as an exploration of what has personal and lasting value at this point in your life. You will have ongoing opportunities to see what is real, solid and reliable, and what is not. This goes for possessions, goals, long-term security, money, specific people, types of relationship, your attitudes about your own talents, earning power and worth, and your definitions of what has value to you.

This review has past, present and future aspects to it, much like the three ghosts that visit Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Past is likely to show up first and hang around the longest. Enjoy the memories and the brief revisiting of old ways of being, and bless the reminders of unpleasantness that’s departed. He can help you pack up a lot and put it safely in the past — and pick up a precious trinket or two to carry with your in your heart.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

This week serves up a cosmic hot pot, with volatile, norm-breaking mental activity and emotional developments that are escalating and gaining staying power. It’s a heated mix of spur-of-the-moment, freedom-loving impulses and inescapable, stabilizing or limiting factors.

The mental part promises to be all over the map. It could involve realizations, conversations, information you hear, read or stumble upon, and how you get about in the outside world. Anything’s possible, because the comic messenger is lighting matches with awakening, iconoclastic, unpredictable Uranus.

What plays out has an out-of-the-blue, erupting quality and energetic fire, from enthusiasm to excitement to anger. It is also part of two processes that are already in play.

It’s hurrying along the updating you’re doing of your outlook on life, the mission that launched under last week’s Sagittarius New Moon. This phase has a significant unpremeditated component. Mercury and Uranus are firing up a speak-before-you-think vibe, which means you may realize what you think after you hear yourself voice it. This also bodes well for making organic changes easily in how you are approaching the holiday season. Watch how your plans shift this week from obligations into what you want. (Yes, someone might get angry, but the change will already have happened.)

A connection is also likely to the restructuring we’re all undergoing because of the ongoing clash between Uranus and Pluto, the agent of fundamental, unavoidable change. You may be able to see a connection to early November, when they last clashed, or June of last year, when they started their battle at the degree where Uranus and Mercury are linking now. Data or decisions could come now that build on one of those times and spur you to liberation, self-actualization and/or taking a risk that’s extreme by your definition.

There are no take-backs, either, especially where emotions are concerned. Emotional developments are escalating, heightening the stakes, intensifying connections, stabilizing some and cutting others back. Bigger-is-better Jupiter is in an easy flow all week to Saturn and his love of structure and order. (Their contact, a harmonious trine, is exact on Thursday.)

Their teamwork is bringing containment, which is a bit of a paradox when water and emotions are involved. Think of what happens when you try to grab water (it sloshes through your fingers) or shove it into a tight space (it overflows) or a small container (it can splash out, and it feels really heavy). Refrain from forcing, though, and water will find its own course, ultimately reshaping any land it crosses. As emotions and events do this week.

The Jupiter/Saturn link could promote committing to profound and nurturing depths of intimacy and sharing, or to safeguarding and increasing the return on your investment in any exchange. You could observe, or, perish forfend, engage in Gollum-like possession of a prized object, situation or resource. Family issues could turn into a tsunami, or ripen into better connections than ever before, and/or escalate into extremely serious questions of mortality or inheritance. If you hear a “no” or hit a wall or closed door, consider it solid.

Whichever direction developments go — and they could involve your inner life as well as situations with other people — they’re staying put. They’re leading us to stability in the midst of a deep, boundless ocean, much like putting down an anchor, or installing a buoy to mark the spot.

Look for that marker to come back into view next May, when Jupiter returns to the degree of his current aspect to Saturn. At the moment, you’re on the trail of the emotional flow from July, when Jupiter first linked with Saturn. You’re going back over emotional territory and picking up sustenance of some kind. What connection can you draw between how you were feeling last summer and the emotions cresting now?

We’re in the process of making final decisions. They will lock into place when we come back to this week’s marker, in May.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

This year’s Sagittarius New Moon calls for updating how you look at life. It’s disrupting beliefs and assumptions, drawing attention to the impact they have on you — and others — and escalating the reminders that we are all interconnected. And it’s giving you permission to remodel your frame of reference to put enjoying being alive at the center.

The New Moon has the cooperation of one of the forces behind the ongoing change imperative that has been rocking and restructuring our inner and outer worlds: Uranus, the awakener, rebel and advocate of alternative viewpoints. He and his partner-in-change Pluto have already tossed out aspects of your identity and relationships that have expired. It is time now to shake up what you do with the information you have gathered (and been fed) about how the world works.

The teamwork of Uranus and the New Moon is burning away tired, automatic and outmoded perceptions. It has the refreshing effect of traveling away from home for more than a few days. The break in your routine causes you to experience your environment differently when you return. The fact that there are other ways of doing things — setting up the space, spending your time, is at the forefront of your awareness, especially if you traveled to a different country.

You’ve been through changes this year that are causing you to perceive and experience life differently. While it’s certainly possible to make conscious and deliberate changes in your life philosophy now, a lot of what this New Moon sparks is going to be intuitive and instinctive. They will simply happen, because you are drawn naturally to them. Or you will become aware that they have already happened.

Someone may also make an observation that knocks your thinking on its side, or that points to a humongous elephant in the room. It might have been there so long that you were blind to it. Whether you were previously ignoring it, or whether it had been there so long that it’s faded into invisibility, you now have the chance to examine it — and the relationship you want to have with it at this point.

Pope Francis serves as a poster child for this potential, and for the New Moon’s mission, with his recent denouncement of the financial markets and their harm to the poor as contrary to the tenets of Christianity. Just has his statement has gotten him denounced as a Marxist (think about it: Marxism is an atheist construct, and the pope’s the head of the Catholic Church), entrenched positions may send flak flying around (or at) you when alternate viewpoints take the spotlight.

More importantly, the Pope’s statement points to the involvement of the weak and injured in this New Moon. Chiron, embodiment of our abiding, incurable wounds, makes a harsh contact to the New Moon that demands action. It pushes for change in our thinking and beliefs about the less fortunate in our world. Watch for further discussion on the Pope’s statement and backlash against retailers calling low-paid workers in on Thanksgiving. Watch, too, for developments that stir compassion and link us in an instant with people in far distant, different circumstances.

The New Moon also pushes for change in how we allow early wounding to shape our view of the world and ourselves. This New Moon could inspire rewriting what you think, believe and say about yourself, as well as rewriting the role that early wounds play in your current life.

You have the freedom to think differently, to ease up on yourself (Stop that negative talk! Stop it!) and to decide to run your life differently. The holidays are the immediate playing field for this. Watch how you are drawn to mark them (or not). Longevity is no longer sufficient reason for any given to have a continuing place in your life, and that includes personal and family traditions.

They’re in a cosmic fruit basket upset this December. Breaks from the norm are the norm: Foregoing the usual films, music, activities and baking for the unfamiliar (or none), rethinking giving, and gathering with a different cast and/or at different locations than usual. Spend your time consciously. Invest in less in obligations, especially dreaded ones, and more in people and pursuits you enjoy.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.

The holiday season is off and running, and our attitudes are catching up with the calendar (and commercial behavior) at last. Nostalgia’s to be expected as we get into the spirit this week, but it’s short-lived. The clouds will fade to show that old traditions are losing their clockwork appeal, while new approaches are gaining ground.

The starting bell sounds with Monday’s New Moon in buoyant Sagittarius, which kindles inner fires and warm spirits. They’re burning differently this year, though, because of a boost from Uranus, the awakener, agent of unforeseeable change and advocate of alternate viewpoints. The combination is sending off sparks of innovation and egging us on to take risks, shake up our givens and have fun in the process. (Read more in my mooncast.)

Thinking and communication become more excited (and excitable) starting on Wednesday, when cosmic messenger Mercury leaves the heavy waters of Scorpio and warms himself by the fire of Sagittarius. Conversations and the air will lighten up; people will be more jovial and inclined to see the humor in situations. His stay is brief, only until Christmas Eve, but those two weeks will bring enthusiasm, a sense of possibilities, and running around like crazy.

This weekend, his hard contact with illusionist Neptune kicks up clouds of romanticism and nostalgia. Approach them like cotton candy: Indulge a little (you’ll want to on Sunday, no matter how much you object in advance to the concept), but not too much, lest you get woozy — or a tummy ache.

The sweet confusion has a limited shelf life, but the weekend’s other atmospheric shift will last through July. You’ll have to work at being alone this holiday season, because that will not be the natural order. Relationships and the art of language, negotiation and, let’s be honest, war are taking center stage when Mars, the planet that rules our ambitions, drive, motivation and energy, moves into Libra on Saturday.

Although he usually zips through a sign in a only a few weeks, Mars is spending the first half of 2014 in Libra, which operates as Relationship Central. One upshot: Like it or not, we will be pouring energy into figuring out how to coexist with each other.

We started constructing a new platform for that (in our minds, at least) with the Libra New Moon at the beginning of October. Watch for openings and impulses now to implement new approaches and decisions that started dawning then.

We’ve all undergone phenomenal changes throughout the year, and we’ll be dealing with each other differently this holiday season. The big shakeups are scheduled in the last week of the month, when Mars locks into the ongoing battle of cosmic change agents Uranus and Pluto. For now, notice who you feel drawn to, who approaches you, and what you decide to do together. It will not recreate your past. The changes could create your vision, though.

I have now been making this weekly forecast freely available for five years without missing a single installment. Please support it by booking a reading or making a donation via PayPal to kbiehlATempowermentunlimited.net. Thank you! And thank you to those who have donated — I truly appreciate your gesture.